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Comment by pishpash | Hacker News Reader

Then have a thick skin and say no. That's the only way.

Oh I do. But are teenagers going to have a thick skin for instance? It's fine for me to reject it for now, but if it becomes a social expectation it will be hard to say no without facing social consequences.

This is how American cultural norms proliferate through technology.

Agreed. I visited a pizza place in London a few years back which automatically added a 15% tip to all orders. You had to ask to remove it. Social engineering at its finest; most people won’t ask to remove a tip that’s already been added. I simply never returned; I refuse to support a business that favours tipping culture over higher minimum wages.

This is standard practice in London. Virtually all table-service restaurants (but not pubs) add service charge to your bill, usually 12.5%. (15% sounds excessive, I don’t think I’ve seen that).

You are not expected to tip in addition to the service charge, and by law, staff get paid 100% of any service charge and gratuities with no deductions.

> by law, staff get paid 100% of any service charge and gratuities with no deductions

If only that was true. Staff are only currently entitled to 100% of cash tips - service charges paid by card are not counted, and often form part of the staff's base pay, or go to the owners.

Parliament has voted through a law which will change this - but it isn't in force yet. https://www.simplybusiness.co.uk/knowledge/articles/2021/10/...

Wow, "first consulted on in 2016"

Funny how the Tories can push through sweeping changes to our constitution in a single night, while bills like this take... 7 years just to reach their second reading in the commons.

https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/2927

It's actually this bill - https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3197 - which has been completely passed already (received royal assent).

Well, that's good news at least. But still, 7 years from consultation to passage through parliament is far too long!

> "service charges paid by card are not counted, and often form part of the staff's base pay, or go to the owners."

This was true some years ago. But now days, most (vast majority of?) restaurants are compliant with the (upcoming) law and pay out all tips to staff. Source: friends who work in the industry. This issue has gotten significant media attention in the past any any restaurant not paying out tips fairly would get shamed pretty hard!

There is a tax benefit for the restaurant as well, VAT is charged on restaurant meals but not on these "service charges".

I disagree that it's all restaurants, it's closer to half. The other half might have it for groups 6+ or 8+ people.

It’s 15% free extra cash flow for payment processors to calculate fees on, not for the restaurants. Then they might be able to double dip it by transfer fees, or maybe simply hold it and expire it until owners correctly configure some nuisance_feature.

"If she doesn't like it, she should learn to type."

European countries have culture stretching back a thousand years. We will resist.

I remember in Berlin back around 2004 that all the expat Americans were always online, and most of the Germans simply weren't. The things we knew about and talked about were different. Many people I knew didn't have broadband. We didn't have a shared culture.

Now everybody has phones and we are all feeding from the same spigots. Kids grew up like this.

I do think this has resulted in significant Americanization of German culture.

It's been interesting to observe the monoculture as an American living in Germany. For instance, during the George Floyd protests in the states, there were mass demonstrations against police brutality in the US being held in Berlin.

I think that police brutality and racial discrimination are important issues, but I could not help wondering what those (mostly) teens and young adults hoped to accomplish by protesting what's happening in a completely different society thousands of kilometers away. Especially when there's plenty of discrimination to get upset about right here in Germany.

I remember travelling around Europe as a young adult in the late 00s.

In every country, the teenagers dressed slightly differently, and these styles were all very different to what I saw on the streets at home in London.

Now, in every European city the teenagers, and the younger adults <35yo, are all wearing one of a handful of styles, which have been unified across borders by social media.

Revise your understanding of thick please. I a business is expecting me to do all the work to obtain service from them, they should be tipping me, not me tipping them. Next time I see Jeff Bezos's yacht maybe try to step on board and ask for my service fee...

Depends on if you pay before or after you receive your food.

I've yet to see a QR-code ordering system that let you choose to pay at the end of your meal. The idea of deciding how much to tip before you've even interacted with any of the staff or tasted your meal seems utterly absurd to me - what are you actually tipping? If I were running a restaurant I'd explicitly avoid using a pay-up-front system largely because I'm sure for most customers it would remove any incentive to tip based on the level of service/quality of food provided.

Almost all the ones I've seen are pay-to-order, and prompt for tip (sometimes preselected!) at that time.

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